This last was an awful threat. In that time when the preachers lived far apart, the word of a presiding elder was almost enough to ruin a man. But instead of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly stubborn. If the elder and the conference could be so unjust he would bear the consequences, but would never submit.
The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house, and the presiding elder accordingly preached in the grove. All the time of his preaching Morton Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the zealous Ann Eliza were there. But no Ann Eliza appeared. Nothing but grief could thus keep her away from the meeting. The more Morton meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel. He had acted from the highest motives. He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt—the weak-looking Sister Sims—had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness the appearance of courtship. How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann Eliza of any design? Old ministers know better than to trust implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people. There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves. Intrigue is one of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks—a small but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of Mansoul under an alias.
A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from other people. He was conscious that Magruder's confidence in him was weakened, and it seemed to him that all the brethren and sisters looked at him askance. When he came to make the concluding prayer he had a sense of hollowness in his devotions, and he really began to suspect that he might be a hypocrite.
In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and in the presence of class-leaders, stewards, local preachers and exhorters from different parts of the circuit, the once popular preacher felt that he had somehow lost caste. He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for three months of labor; and small as was the amount, the scrupulous and now morbid Morton doubted whether he were fairly entitled to it. Sometimes he thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience by marrying Ann Eliza with or without love. But his whole proud, courageous nature rebelled against submitting to marry under compulsion of Magruder's threat.
At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and he got on but poorly. He looked in vain for Miss Ann Eliza Meacham. She was not there to go through the audience and with winning voice persuade those who were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's bench for prayer. She was not there to pray audibly until every heart should be shaken. Morton was not the only person who missed her. So famous a "working Christian" could not but be a general favorite; and the people were not slow to divine the cause of her absence. Brother Goodwin found the faces of his brethren averted, and the grasp of their hands less cordial. But this only made him sulky and stubborn. He had never meant to excite Sister Meacham's expectations, and he would not be driven to marry her.
The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting saw all the roads crowded with people. Everybody was on horseback, and almost every horse carried "double." At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast began in the large school-house. No one was admitted who did not hold a ticket, and even of those who had tickets some were turned away on account of their naughty curls, their sinful "artificials," or their wicked ear-rings. At the moment when the love-feast began the door was locked, and no tardy member gained admission. Plates, with bread cut into half-inch cubes, were passed round, and after these glasses of water, from which each sipped in turn—this meagre provision standing ideally for a feast. Then the speaking was opened by some of the older brethren, who were particularly careful as to dates, announcing, for instance, that it would be just thirty-seven years ago the twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at the mourner's bench in Logan's school-house on the banks of the South Fork of the Roanoke River in Old Virginny." This statement the brethren had heard for many years, with a proper variation in date as the time advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted it again with pious ejaculations of thanksgiving. There was a sameness in the perorations of these little speeches. Most of the old men wound up by asking an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their "last days might be their best days," and that their "path might grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." Soon the elder sisters began to speak of their trials and victories, of their "ups and downs," their "many crooked paths," and the religion that "happifies the soul." With their pathetic voices the fire spread, until the whole meeting was at a white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!" "Bless the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the fervor of feeling. Of course, you, sitting out of the atmosphere of it and judging coldly, laugh at this indecorous fervor. Perhaps it is just as well to laugh, but for my part I cannot. I know too well how deep and vital were the emotions out of which came these utterances of simple and earnest hearts. I find it hard to get over an early prejudice that piety is of more consequence than propriety.
Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza. If she were present he could hardly tell it. Make the bonnets of women cover their faces and make them all alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a uniform of homespun cotton, and there is not much individuality left. If Ann Eliza Meacham were present she would, according to custom, speak early; and all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and eloquent utterances. So when the speaking and singing had gone on for an hour, and the voice of Sister Meacham was not heard, Morton sadly concluded that she must have remained at home, heart-broken on account of disappointment at his neglect. In this he was wrong. Just at that moment a sister rose in the further corner of the room and began to speak in a low and plaintive voice. It was Ann Eliza. But how changed!
She proceeded to say that she had passed through many fiery trials in her life. Of late she had been led through deep waters of temptation, and the floods of affliction had gone over her soul. (Here some of the brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at Brother Goodwin.) The devil had tempted her to stay at home. He had tempted her to sit silent this morning, telling her that her voice would only discourage others. But at last she had got the victory and received strength to bear her cross. With this, her voice rose and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph to the end. Morton was greatly affected, not because her affliction was universally laid at his door, but because he now began to feel, as he had not felt before, that he had indeed wrought her a great injury. As she stood there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved her. He pitied her; and Pity lives on the next floor below Love.
As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader think too meanly of her. She had resolved to "catch" Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment she saw him. But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the rights which the highest civilization accords to woman is that of "bringing down" the chosen man if she can. Ann Eliza was not consciously hypocritical. Her deep religious feeling was genuine. She had a native genius for devotion—and a genius for devotion is as much a natural gift as a genius for poetry. Notwithstanding her eloquence and her rare talent for devotion, her gifts in the direction of honesty and truthfulness were few and feeble. A phrenologist would have described such a character as possessing "Spirituality and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small." You have seen such people, and the world is ever prone to rank them at first as saints, afterwards as hypocrites; for the world classifies people in gross—it has no nice distinctions. Ann Eliza, like most people of the oratorical temperament, was not over-scrupulous in her way of producing effects. She could sway her own mind as easily as she could that of others. In the case of Morton, she managed to believe herself the victim of misplaced confidence. She saw nothing reprehensible either in her own or her aunt's manœuvering. She only knew that she had been bitterly disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through whom the disappointment had come.
Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards of his time. Such genuine fervor was, in his estimation, evidence of a high state of piety. One "who lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist phrase, must be honest and pure and good. So Morton reasoned. He had wounded such an one. He owed reparation. In marrying Ann Eliza he would be acting generously, honestly and wisely, according to the opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority he knew. For in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get the most saintly of wives, the most zealous of Christians, the most useful of women. So when Mr. Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the service to put away every sin out of their hearts before they ventured to take the communion, Morton, with many tears, resolved to atone for all the harm he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, and to marry her—if the Lord should open the way.